Previously, in The Haunting...

"She knew me, Felicity." Oliver turned to face me. "Rose knew me. That person you saw in the vision is me, and the other man – the one you've been seeing for so long – is Ray. The same Ray who's flying to another continent tonight to plead for your life. The night Damian Dahrk cursed Rose's ancestors to an early death, Ray and I were there. His punishment for us was just a little different."

And now, Chapter 12 of The Haunting

His punishment for us was just a little different.

I started to ask what he meant by that – the words were on the tip of my tongue. Before I could get them out, my chest tightened. The world careened sideways. I need some help here! I heard Oliver shout, not now but one hundred years ago. Rose was in his arms, but it felt like it was me; I could feel his body solid against my own, his heart racing. I couldn't get a breath. My lungs spasmed until I began to cough – not Rose, not one hundred years ago.

Me.

Here.

Now.

"Oliver," I gasped between coughing jags. There was no mistaking the fear in his eyes when he looked at me. Panic clouded everything, closing the world around me down to a single point of light. To blue eyes, intent on mine. "Something's wrong."

He ran to the door and flung it open, shouting down the hallway. "Somebody call Willa. Now!"

An instant later he was on the bed beside me. He took my hands in his. "It's okay," he said. His voice was even, though the fear was still clear on his face. "Just breathe. Easy." He breathed in and out, demonstrating. Easy for him to say.

Tears streamed down my face, the strangling in my chest easing up only slightly before another coughing fit overtook me. I leaned my forehead into Oliver's chest, body racked with chills and a deep, hacking cough unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. Oliver rubbed my back, and I knew he was speaking but I couldn't hear the words.

When the fit finally passed and I could breathe again – marginally, at least – I pulled back, then stared in horror at Oliver's shirt.

Flecks of blood spotted the white cotton. My blood. Oliver followed my gaze when he saw the look on my face, and his own expression paled more than I thought possible. He fought to regain control, then took my chin in his hand and tipped my face to his.

"Listen to me," he said. "You're all right. You're going to be fine, Felicity. Just stay with me."

I nodded, still strangling for air, unable to speak. Willa rushed through the door a short time later, but by then I was hardly aware of her. Of anything. Every breath was agony.

I was dying.

Not soon; not in a few weeks or a year or a decade. Tonight. Now.

I closed my eyes, aware of Willa working on me while Oliver and Quentin stood off to the side of the room, watching. I focused on breathing.

And I prayed.

When I woke the next morning, sunlight streamed through my window. I lay in bed for a couple of minutes, assessing how I felt. No pounding head, no nausea, no tightness in my chest or aches in my bones. And, best of all, no coughing.

"Well, well, well," Willa said when I opened my eyes. She stood over me, and seemed to take me in at a glance. "Look who's still with us."

She spoke in a whisper, and it was only when she nodded toward the corner that I understood why. Oliver slept in an antique chair far too small for his large frame, his shirt still spotted with my blood.

I moved to sit up, but Willa held me back with a gentling hand on my chest. "Easy, lass. Move slowly, now. You barely made it through the night, let's not go playing the hero now."

"I feel better," I said.

She managed a weary smile. "That's good. That's what we were hoping. Your fever broke at three, maybe four this morning. Ray called not long after."

I looked at her in surprise, mentally recounting the conversation I'd had with Oliver the night before. "It worked, then?" I asked. "Ray going to…um…" Did Willa know about Damian Dahrk? It was hard to keep track of any of this. She smiled patiently, but before she could reply, Oliver woke with a start.

"She's better," Willa said, before he could ask. He stood, stretching briefly before he crossed the room to me.

"You're sure?" he asked her.

"She is," I said. "Whatever Ray did last night, it must have worked." I glanced at Willa. "Not to shortchange your mad doctoring skills."

"Not at all," Willa assured me. "I expect you're right: this has much more to do with Ray Palmer and Damian Dahrk than it does me staying up and mopping your brow all night."

Oliver hovered over us while Willa checked my vitals and listened to my lungs and, ultimately, declared me miraculously healed. At least for the moment. She excused herself a few minutes later, leaving Oliver and me alone once more.

"Sorry if I scared you," I said.

He shrugged wearily. "It's not a problem. I'm just glad you're all right."

"For now. Did you talk to Ray?"

"I did," he confirmed. "We got a reprieve—"

"For how long?"

"A while," he said vaguely. "Don't worry about it."

"Easy for you to say – you didn't contract magical TB last night."

"Damian was proving a point," Oliver said grimly. He sat down in a chair beside the bed. "I'm sorry about that. I think you'll be all right for a while now, though. When Ray gets back tonight, we can focus on figuring out how to access the memories locked inside your head, and from there we'll find the butterfly stone and get it back to Damian."

"You make it sound so easy."

"It could be," he said, though the words lacked conviction. "We won't know until we try. One thing's for sure: it will be easier than standing by and watching you die. At least this way I'll be doing something."

I studied him, genuinely touched. "That bad, huh?"

He huffed a laugh. "You have no idea."

"I'm sorry I worried you – worried everyone. Also sorry for the whole spitting-blood-all-over-you thing," I said, nodding to his shirt, and wrinkled my nose. "You should probably change."

He looked down absently, as though he'd totally forgotten about being covered in my blood. "Yeah, probably so. You mind giving me a little time to freshen up? If you think you can handle the family for a while, I'd like to take an hour."

I hesitated. "Actually, I was kind of hoping we could continue our conversation – the one we were having before the whole coughing-up-blood-and-passing-out episode." He looked so tired that I almost had pity on him - almost. Not quite, though. "You said you and Ray are the ones I'm seeing in the visions. Either you guys have a skincare regime to die for, or something is very, very wrong."

He sighed and leaned back in the chair, massaging the back of his neck as he did so. His whole body looked like it was in knots. "No, you're right. Something is very wrong. As I was saying last night, Dahrk's curse was different for Ray and me. He cursed the Merlyn girls to die; he cursed us to live."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "He cursed you to live? I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound so terrible."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "No? Try it sometime. Try watching your family and friends grow old and die; moving every decade because people start asking questions about you; never getting close to anyone because you're afraid they'll learn your secret. Trust me, it's not all it's cracked up to be."

"So, the healing thing the other night," I said. "That wasn't my imagination; you do heal faster than normal people."

"We do," Oliver confirmed. "We feel pain as much as anyone else does, it just doesn't last as long and ultimately can't kill us."

"And Willa knows about this?" I asked.

He hesitated. The way he looked at me - or didn't, actually - told me there was something I was missing. "Willa was there," he finally admitted.

"Willa was where?" I asked, confused.

"The night Dahrk cursed us at the train station. Willa was a healer...witch...I don't know, people called her a lot of things. But she worked for Dahrk; she was there that night, and tried to help us - tried to help Rose. Dahrk didn't take too kindly to that."

"So she's immortal too?" Whoa. I wondered if I'd had some kind of mental break last night during all the coughing, and this was the result. Maybe Oliver wasn't here at all, and I was imagining this entire conversation. I studied him, but the shadows under his eyes and the stubble on his jaw combined with the blood flecks on his shirt convinced me: this was all very real.

"She is," Oliver said.

I had a million other questions to ask, but before I could get a single one of them out, someone knocked lightly on the door. Quentin opened up without waiting for me to answer, which spoke to how worried he'd been; most of the time, he practically had to have a written invitation before he'd come in my bedroom. Concern shadowed his eyes, and my heart twisted a little at just how relieved he looked at sight of me sitting up in the bed.

"I heard you were feeling better," he said, smiling.

"I am," I confirmed. "Sorry to worry everyone."

"Just see that you don't do it again," he said. He looked at Oliver, and shook his head. "Jesus, kid. You look worse than she does, and she's the one who was at death's door last night."

"You do look pretty bad," I agreed.

"I'm definitely feeling last night," he admitted. "I was thinking I might take an hour, try to get my head together."

"Take two," I said. "Or three. I don't think I'll be going anywhere this morning, and what are the chances Malcolm's going to murder me in front of the rest of the family? Actually, don't answer that. Go ahead, Oliver. We can talk more later - I'll be fine."

He didn't look convinced, but eventually he agreed, leaving me alone with Quentin once more. I looked at the tray that the lawyer still held.

"Thanks for bringing that up," I said, "but I could have eaten downstairs, Quentin. I'm not an invalid."

"Maybe not now, but you should have seen yourself last night. Actually, scratch that - it's probably better you didn't. I'm glad you're feeling so much better now, but you still need to take it easy." He nodded to the tray. "You think you can get some food in you now?"

"Definitely – I'm kind of famished." I got up and went to a small side table set up by the window, with a perfect view of the overgrown grounds below. Quentin stood by with his hands in his pockets and hovered over me until I finally shook my head. "Okay, this definitely isn't going to work. Either sit down and eat with me, or go find somebody else to babysit. I'm fine – I swear."

"You're not fine," he said darkly. "I don't care what kind of hocus pocus Willa's Scottish friend supposedly worked on you. As sick as you were last night-"

"I'll take it easy," I promised him. "I swear."

When he finally left, only half convinced I wasn't going to choke to death on the broth and scrambled eggs Raisa had made, I sighed with relief. Sometimes, alone is a very good thing.

I showered once I'd gotten some food down, amazed at how much better I felt: clear, focused, and energized. Turns out, wizard cures are so much more effective than ibuprofen. All the while, I kept thinking about what Oliver had told me.

Cursed to live forever.

He was right: it sounded great at first, but I couldn't imagine watching everyone else go on with their lives, grow old, die...and I just stayed the same. I wondered what his life had been like when he'd first met Ray, or how they had met. He said he'd watched his family die; had that included a wife, I wondered? Or children? I shivered at the thought. What could be worse than living through the death of your babies?

Of course, the Merlyn family had a lot of experience with that, didn't they?

It was only after I was fed, clean, and dressed that I remembered Rose's diary. I searched the blankets, but could find no sign of it. I panicked, and was just about to call for Quentin when I spotted it behind the bed.

Phew.

It was nine a.m. by this time, and I could hear voices downstairs. I had no desire to join the rest of the family any sooner than I had to, so settled at the table by the window to work my way through Rose's words.

I paused at the first page, running my fingers over the inscription.

To my Rose,

To record every precious second.

Much love always,

Dad

You're sixteen years old, Rose, a low voice echoed in my head. The scene around me changed in an instant, but with a clarity I'd never experienced before. There was no blurring at the edges, no haze. I was in this bedroom, though everything in it was new: the wallpaper not yet faded, none of the dings and scratches in the floorboards or the furniture. Rose sat on the bed, Byron – her father – at the entrance to the room. She was crying, and I could feel the fury tightening her chest.

You will not leave this house before your eighteenth birthday, I don't care how much you think you love this boy.

Rose glared at him, tears streaming down pale cheeks. You only want here so I can be your model – if I didn't agree to strip to nothing and sit for hours in your studio, I wonder how long you would care that I was in your house.

Byron's jaw worked, emotion that surprised me showing in his eyes. You are an important part of my work, Rose – you're right about that. But if you think that's the only reason we care about you in this family, you're wrong. You're still a child—

Not according to the men at the last gallery showing, she bit out. Color climbed high in her cheeks, grief replaced with rage in an instant. They see me as anything but a little girl, thanks to you.

The vision faded before I could see Byron's reaction to her words, but I was surprised by how much he clearly cared about his daughter. The portraits he'd painted of Rose made me think there had been something less-than-kosher about the relationship between the two of them, but now I wondered if I was right about that. Whenever I got flashes of Rose, I never felt like she'd suffered any actual, physical abuse, but obviously it had taken an emotional toll being painted so explicitly for so many years. No wonder she had issues.

I leafed through the rest of the book, surprised to find page after page taken up with sketches of women's fashions of the day. Measurements accompanied them, along with scribbled notes about which kind of fabric should be used, what color each piece would be, and the stitches that would work best. Rose was a designer. Or she'd wanted to be, anyway.

I paused at the sketch of an elaborate wedding gown, and closed my eyes. Tried to push myself into that memory.

I got flashes of Ray's face, of Rose hunched over a sewing machine, of a riverbank that may have been on the Seine, but everything was just an impression. Try as I might, I couldn't get to that moment.

Frustrated, I finally put the diary away at ten o'clock to go find Oliver.

His bedroom door was closed. I hesitated before knocking, afraid that I would wake him. He'd been up watching over me for most of the night – the man could use a break at this point. The thought of what he would do if I left the house without him was enough to convince me it was better to risk waking him than deal with his temper if I didn't.

"Oliver, it's me," I called through the door after knocking.

He opened up before I'd gotten the words out, and my eyes widened at the sight that greeted me. Oliver stood in low-slung sweats and no shirt, a naked, very muscular chest suddenly right there at eye level.

"Uh – hi," I said to his chest. I blinked and took a step back. He was sweaty, and I noted a set of weights in the corner of the room and a pull-up bar mounted in his closet door.

"You ready?" he asked. He grabbed a towel and wiped his face, motioning me into the room.

"I am – or I was, but I can wait if you're naked." I shook my head. "Busy. I can wait if you're busy."

He grinned at me, lighter than I'd seen him since our first meeting. "I haven't had much time to work out since I signed on with you. Turns out there's not a lot of down time when protecting Felicity Smoak."

He took a long pull from a water bottle, and leaned back against the wall. I was having a hard time looking away from his chest – not only because of the muscles and the sweat, but because of an almost inhuman number of scars that marred what would otherwise be a statue-worthy torso.

"Felicity?" Oliver prompted, when I continued to stare without managing a word. My eyes shot up to his face, cheeks flaming.

"Sorry," I said. "I just…haven't seen this much of you. You have a lot of scars." Nice, Felicity. Very sensitive.

"They're from a long time ago," he said. "I'm fine."

"Yes, you are," I said, then blushed all the harder and closed my eyes. "Fine as in okay, I mean – not fine as in, whoa, he is fine… Though you are, obviously. But—"

"Felicity," Oliver said quietly, and I liked the way it sounded like he was smiling when he said my name. I opened my eyes. He had grabbed a T-shirt, and now pulled it over his head. "Take a breath," he instructed.

I did, and immediately felt better. "So, you can scar?" I asked when I could speak again. "When you heal, you don't just heal completely?"

"No, I do," he said. "These are all from before Dahrk."

I bit my lip, lost in thought. Those weren't small scars. What had he been doing before he and Ray became friends, or whatever it was they'd been to each other in the 1920s?

"I have a lot of questions," I admitted.

He grinned at me, that lightness returning. "Why am I not surprised about that? Should we take a walk? I'll answer what I can."

"A walk sounds good. It would be nice to get outside again, and—"

"Hail, hail, the prodigal daughter returns," a girl's voice called from downstairs. Seconds later, I heard footsteps racing up the stairs, and Thea appeared in Oliver's open doorway.

"Hey!" she said, with an easy smile. "I caught the first boat – well, the only boat – in with Sara." She looked from me to Oliver, eyes darkening with suspicion. "Sorry, did I interrupt something?"

There was a bratty little sister quality to the question that I found weirdly endearing, having never had a bratty little sister before.

"Not at all," Oliver said smoothly. "Felicity and I were just getting ready for a walk."

"Great," Thea said. 'That's why I'm here, actually."

I turned to her with a silent question, eyebrows up.

"Reggie called last night and said you could use reinforcements," she explained. "He thinks you have some cool ideas, but he asked that I use my patented Merlyn charm to get Dad and Tommy on board."

"Really?" I asked stupidly. "But I thought Reggie hated me."

"He looks at everyone that way," she said, waving a hand. "He's actually a marshmallow – plus, he's not an idiot, and it sounds like what you're talking about would be great PR for Merlyn Enterprises. God knows we need it."

"I had no idea you were so attuned to the business, Thea," Malcolm said, materializing so suddenly at Oliver's door that I jumped. He appraised me with a long, cool look. "Nice to see you're up and around again, Felicity. Feeling better?"

"Were you sick?" Thea asked.

"Just a passing bug," I assured her.

"You weren't throwing up, were you?" She took a step back, looking like she'd just spotted a pit viper in the room. "Because I hate throwing up. I'm excited about the gardens and the new cousin thing, but a girl's gotta draw the line somewhere."

"I didn't throw up," I assured her. I just coughed blood all over Oliver and nearly died, I added silently. Just another Saturday night at Merlyn Manor.

"Okay, good," Thea said with a relieved sigh. "Then where were we?" Before anyone else could reply, she answered herself. "Right: garden tour. Daddy and I will just leave you two to whatever was making Oliver sweat so much, and meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes? I'll get Reggie and Tommy, too."

Malcolm protested, but I was impressed at how easily Thea handled him. She winked at me as the two of them left the room, shutting the door soundly behind them.

"So much for quiet time in the woods," I said.

"This is good, though," Oliver said. "Trust me, Thea is a force to be reckoned with. If you have her on your side, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the family falls in line."

"Even Malcolm?" I asked doubtfully.

"Maybe not Malcolm," he conceded. "But with everyone else on your side, you can get around Malcolm. Moira always did."

"If you say so."

"I do. And now, unless you want me to change in front of you, just give me a couple of minutes. I'll meet you down there."

I was momentarily thrown by that thought, but then I ordered my hormones to give it a rest and left him.

Five minutes later, I met Oliver in the hallway and the two of us went downstairs to find Thea, Reggie, and a clearly reluctant Tommy waiting at the door. Malcolm, predictably enough, was nowhere to be found.

"Dad said he had business to take care of," Thea explained.

"Right. Of course he did," Tommy said. "I'm sure any other time, Dad would love to traipse all over a freezing island with the woman who stole his birthright."

"You really need to stop saying that," Reggie said, surprising me with a smile. "It comes off as tacky and melodramatic. Unless that's what you're going for."

"No," Tommy said. "I was going more for righteous anger."

"You might want to work on that, then," Reggie said. "Practice in the mirror; that always worked for your father."

"Ouch," Thea said. "Somebody's got the claws out."

"Guilty," Reggie said, with a shrug. "You know Malcolm brings out the worst in me."

Reggie was at least a decade older than Tommy, whom I suspected was in his late twenties, but there was something about the way he interacted with both Tommy and Thea that reminded me more of siblings than cousins. I envied the ease between them, the history and connection that they shared, and couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like if I'd been raised with all of them.

"If this is all of us, we should head out," Thea said, taking charge – something I suspected was fairly common. "You ready to dazzle us, Liss?" she asked me.

It took me a second to realize Liss was me. "You might want to work on your expectations, but I'll do my best."

And there you have it... I told you there would be answers! So, was it what you'd thought? Things get dicey again in the next chapter, but hopefully this one kept your interest. Reviews are wildly appreciated, so drop one with your thoughts on the curse (or anything else, really) if you get the notion. Thanks as always for reading!